“Lost time is never found again.” – Benjamin Franklin

I remember a time when I would have said, “If I could just shut my door and not deal with all these associate issues, I could get so much done.” Between budgeting, forecasting, corporate reports, schedule reviews, brand updates, audits, the daily deluge of e-mails, and the 20-30 other things that come across my desk on a daily basis, it would make sense to let everyone else run the show. Then I could focus myself on what I am responsible for.

In this lies the conundrum: As leaders in the world of F&B, our very core knows we could never allow ourselves to be taken out of the action. Removing ourselves from the nitty-gritty controlled chaos would be like trying to remove one of our organs. It becomes a part of us, a part that we thrive on. Read more of this >>

We have recently completed our vast expansion at Potawatomi Bingo Casino that started almost a year ago. You can read more about it in my earlier post, Opening Soon. Without a doubt, it has been very challenging and tiring at times. Busy periods have been followed by some slow times, but it all has been exciting and rewarding.

In March, we invited the public to our open house introducing them to Woodland Dreams, one of three new banquet spaces we have added. The theme of the event was “Treasures or the Caribbean” and had more than 500 guests in attendance, including potential future clients such as corporate meeting planners, Visit Milwaukee representatives, vendors, media partners, business owners, and others qualified by the catering sales team.

This expansion includes RuYi, the Asian concept opened on Memorial Day weekend, together with our focal point on the new casino floor, Bar 360. RuYi offers a Pan-Asian menu, with everything from Hmong to Vietnamese, from Japanese to Chinese, and even an item or two from Singapore as well as the Philippines.

RuYi is conveniently located in the heart of the casino complex. The dining space, while casual, is richly detailed. Curved walls and tables surfaced in gold and red-orange hues add to the experience. Of the two counters, both of which are topped with stone, one has kitchen views where the busy chefs can be glimpsed at work.

By June, we were busy putting final touches on our 7000-square foot production Kitchen. This new space includes a butcher shop, garde manger, hot kitchen, and a cook-chill operation with two 100-gallon kettles and a turbojet cook-chill tank, as well as a fully equipped pastry department to support our ten foodservice venues catering to the six million visitors we expect this year.

Our new buffet followed. Located adjacent to the production kitchen, we feature eight food stations offering salads, seafood, Latin, Mediterranean, Asian, American cuisine, and, of course, pastries and baked goods. These stations are more mini kitchens where our talented and friendly culinarians cook many dishes in front of the guest, where service is provided with a sassy but classy attitude.

June 11th kicked off the opening festivities with more than 3,000 visitors showing up for the open house. The F&B department was geared up to provide great foodservice. Grand Opening Day, June 19th, was the official opening of the new casino areas, now featuring over 750,000 square feet of gaming, entertainment, and F&B facilities. Close to 30,000 visitors showed and the casino gave away $1 million dollars in prizes that day.
Read more of this >>

For most of my life, I’ve been a baseball fan. Some may say it’s because I played the game in very competitive leagues from ages 9 through 18 . Some will think it’s because I also played softball during all my years in the military, and that’s kind of like baseball, isn’t it?

I simply translated my love of pitching and defense to a medium where the focus is truly on the hitter. I saw some terrific things during my lifetime: the timeless Nolan Ryan and several of his no hitters; Cal Ripken breaking a longevity record that truly astounds in that it brought up all the longevity records from other workaday people who never miss a shift; the simple joy of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa chasing a dream home run season (later ruined amid rampant discussions of steroids); the Red Sox breaking their futility and winning not only one but two World Series. I fell in love with the game with that first solid ping of aluminum against leather. It’s a solid feeling that you feel in your guts that can’t be otherwise described. But beyond that, I love baseball for history.

There is a certain timeless quality to it. Small changes to the rules happen each and every year. Pitchers’ mounds get raised and lowered according to the public’s demands for offense. We saw the “dead ball” era when hitters simply seemed too good. The public demanded bigger! better! faster! more! Baseball responded with it’s “juiced era” that eventually ended amid Congressional investigations, shame, and the questioning of some standards that are held most dear. But the only reason all of this happened is because baseball has rumbled along virtually unchanged for a century or better.

When measuring the worth of a career, you have hitstory as a measuring point. Is Albert Pujols or A-Rod a superior player to Honus Wagner or Ty Cobb? The answer can only be yes and no. There is no way to replicate the conditions for either. Would A-Rod be as good playing for a steel mill team? Did Ty Cobb ever have a trainer? A nutritionist? Video analysis of his every at bat? It’s always a yes and a resounding no.

The appreciation of the timeless quality of baseball has served me well in my profession. (By the way, the collective sigh you just heard is from the mighty dozen of my readers who just realized I’ve come to my point). Cooking is, and has always been, timeless. It should remain that way forever.

Now it would be easy for me to elaborate on time lingered over a pot roast served by my grandmother that had the taste and texture of a damp wool blanket or to revel in the sheer genius of her mashed potatoes and gravy at the very same meal. I can’t enliven your lives with stories of learning how to cook Sunday dinner at Gram’s apron strings since we’re talking about a woman whose oven knew two settings, 450 and off. I won’t bore you with the story of the first time I truly tasted a raw oyster, and I mean truly tasted, where eating them for the gross out factor of others around me became a segue into a world of levels of salinity and melon/cucumber/clean aftertaste. It goes beyond anything in my experience and speaks more to the collective experience of all my Cheffly brethren. Pirates to be sure, but also slaves to and students of history.

Take a look at any great chef. And I do mean ANY great chef. Whether you’re looking at an uber-traditionist, fusion dude, retro throwback guy, fanatical classicist, or a molecular gastronomy mad scientist, they all have one thing in common: they know and appreciate solid, simple, cuisine. You can’t manipulate anything without knowing it’s nature. Same goes with people, but human fallibility makes us a much easier target. I’ve never met a vain squash or an insecure eggplant. Well, maybe a small Japanese eggplant could have some size “issues,” but they could argue they had all the taste in a smaller more efficient size. However, this is hardly the point.

During my recent trails and tribulations on the road to find a new culinary home, I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels. Some were spectacular; others made me wonder how in the hell a hotel got stuck in precisely that location (hello, city in Southern Ohio!). The one remarkable thing about all these different properties is how differently their menus are written, executed, and the bizarre nature of the names assigned to their various and sundry offerings. One such menu offended me so much that I wrote a three-page critique on it and gave it to the GM. Understandably, this was not the best of career moves as the critique also included a fair share of sarcasm and snarky comments. Seems I don’t have much of a filter.

Lesson #14, boys and girls: Great sarcastic comedy will seldom get you hired. But I digress…

Before you call me a knucklehead (as my mentor did…repeatedly), please know I stand by every criticism I leveled. I’m not the enemy of invention. If Ferran Adria wants me to realize the essence of thinly shaved and glorious serrano ham as it meets the juicy sweetness of a piece of summer melon by putting me in virtual reality goggles and a space helmet filled with melon scent, who am I to complain? If Grant Aschatz wants me to experience chicken piccatta by tasting a picatta flavored breath strip, I’m all for it. I’m stopping on the way home to actually eat, but I’m all for it. The thing about both experiences is that they both understand what the individual experiences are about. The sweet, salty rush. The feel of butter on your tongue. They understand the history. Hotel “X” didn’t get it.

As a man of considerable girth, I love eggs Benedict. The combination simply sings in a chorus that when done well makes the hairs on your arm stand on end. I also happen to like the variations: Eastern shore Benedict, which replaces the Canadian bacon with crabcakes; anything with a chipotle hollandaise named “Rancho” this or “Santa” that. One thing about Hotel “X” I found offensive was a combination of English muffin, Canadian bacon, poached eggs, and hollandaise sauce was named a California Benedict. Well, huh…how could the rest of the country and I have been so mistaken? Since the name was “California,” was I wrong to expect a lighter variation? Some sort of twist? Couldn’t you have at least thrown me an avocado into the mix (which seems to fit the definition of “California” cuisine to the rest of the country)? Can you do that, Sparky? Nope. Nada. Zip.

Hotel “X” also had a sandwich on the menu called a “Dip It,” which was thinly sliced roast beef and sautéed onions on a hard roll, with a side of Au Jus that the sandwich could be dipped in before each bite. Now call me a snob; call me overly critical; just don’t call me Shirley (sorry…not the time for an Airplane reference). If you are even the slightest student of the world of the sandwich, doesn’t that sound like a French Dip? The very same French Dip rumored to have been invented in, oh I don’t know, say, California!!? Was my critique valid? Yes! Was it particularly smart? Well…no. But what do you expect from someone so sarcastic?

They say those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. I can honestly say I certainly hope so. Great food has always been great food. Create! Invent! But always remember that classics are called “classics” for a reason. Just think, in 20 years, this blog will still exist and still be an appreciation of all those great chefs who came before me and after me. And I will still be, and always remain, a knucklehead. Comforting isn’t it?

We just returned from a wonderful vacation in Cancun. In terms of sheer beauty, Mexico’s best beaches are in Cancun and along the Yucatan’s Quintana Roo coast, extending south almost all the way to the Belizean border. The powdery white-sand beaches boast water like a technicolor dream; it’s so clear you can see through to the coral reefs below. Cancun offers the widest assortment of luxury beachfront hotels, with more restaurants, nightlife, and activities than any other resort destination in the country.

The spectacular Moon Palace Golf & Spa Resort where we stayed is located south of the airport in Cancun’s tranquil south shore. Nestled between 120 acres of tropical foliage with a secluded white sand beach stretching nearly 2000 feet, this resort offers 2,100 luxurious rooms, full fitness facilities, a kids’ club, 14 restaurants featuring a wide variety of cuisines, several bars to quench your thirst, and attentive service make this resort truly a destination for travelers of all ages.

Guest service was abundant at this location from the front office clerk, Emma, who checked us in at 1:00 a.m. after 20 hours traveling with two tired little kids, and Gabriela, the guest service agent who patiently selected appropriate activities for our stay, to Danny the magician, who cheered up our daughter with his balloon figures at breakfast, to Gabriel the attentive server at the dinner buffet and all the other dedicated individuals from housekeeping, room service, front office, restaurants, transportation and security, thank you for showing a rare talent found in today’s hospitality industry: anticipating the guest’s needs and engaging the guest by asking questions and offering service.

The most memorable dining experience we had was at Los Caporales, the elegant Mexican restaurant at the resort; we went there several times. Some of the dishes worth mentioning were the tacos al pastor as starter while the server prepared tableside guacamole. The flautas and ceviche both were outstanding. My favorite was the Arrachera Tampiqueno, a grilled skirt steak accompanied by refried beans in a crisp tortilla cone and rice and grilled nopales topped with Manchego cheese. We had some great Chilean Cabernet to go along with our dinner. Outside the restaurant was a Mariachi band performing nightly.

We got pampered with great service with attention to detail. We also toured the Moon Palace Grand, an elaborate expansion which will add 1,200 more rooms to the resort, complemented by more restaurants and amenities. And while the resort now is one of the older properties within the company, we had an experience one would not necessarily expect in a resort that size.

Palace Resorts has successfully reinvented itself once again. With the newly refurbished properties in the hotel zone as well as additional resorts in Cozumel, Isla Mujeres, and Puerto Vallarta, the company has further grown. Ten years ago the Aventura Palace and Moon Palace Sunrise were under construction and earmarked to set a new standard for the company. I was part of the opening team as Executive Chef for the Riviera Maya properties. The highway Cancun – Tulum was still under construction and Riviera Maya was sparsely populated, besides the town of Puerto Morelos and Playa del Carmen.

“Playa” is Mexico’s hip beach destination with a dash of third-world chic. Above all, it’s easy and low key. You walk to the beach, you walk back to the hotel, you walk to one of the many good restaurants. Next day, you repeat. The beaches are white sand; the water is clear blue and perfect for swimming. If you feel the urge to be active, not far away are ancient Mayan ruins, and Cozumel is just a couple of hours by ferry, offering all the variety that you might want in a beach vacation. Another 10 miles south is Puerto Aventuras, where the company set out to establish a new and higher standard than their properties in the hotel zone.

From design and construction, coordination, to menu research & development was the scope of my responsibilities at this “all inclusive concept” for the Aventura Palace. The owners had their vision of a 5-star concept providing the best local food and service available at the Rivera Maya. The Reef and Reef Bay Palace would follow in phases two and three, completing this resort with 10 food locations and 1,260 rooms.
The property is set within an 85-acre expanse, combining the exuberant virgin jungle, typical of the state of Quintana Roo, with wide and spacious lawns and gardens carefully designed to please the senses. The botanical garden cares for and multiplies the native trees and flowers to offer you the widest array of brilliant colors. From the central patio with its colonial fountain, through the romantic archways, down to the natural tile floor to the carefully handcrafted furniture, it all combines to create a magical setting. Lavish breakfast buffets, lunch and dinner “a la carte” or buffet-style, great food and service as well as exciting entertainment. We were delighting even the most discerning guests with sumptuous creations then.

The nearby eco park of Xpu-Ha features five alternative food and beverage locations as well as lodging. That was then, and now Palace Resorts is about to raise the bar once more with world class service, great food and amenities, further expanding by opening its first property in the Dominican Republic, a casino resort with 1,700 rooms.

Back here in Wisconsin, fall is approaching. While we are busy organizing our photos and memorabilia from this vacation, we are already talking of things to do the next time at the Mexican Riviera.

I recently read an article on the nation’s Top 100 Restaurants, with the top restaurant grossing $66.6 million in 2007. Unfortunately, many hotel F&B professionals still regard the restaurants and bars in their hotels as amenities to drive room rate.

The opportunity to bring in local guests who may consider a banquet/catering function in the future is often overlooked. Sales and catering managers who entertain clients in the restaurant want to showcase the hotel’s hospitality offerings. So how can we maximize the ability of outlets to generate revenue for the hotel? Here are some basic suggestions:

1. Think of the outlets as a sales tool to promote the hotel.

2. Advertise the outlets with minor references to the hotel in local markets.
3. Treat each outlet (i.e., lounge, restaurant) as an individual revenue center so that budgeted funds are used only for its operation.
4. Allow the outlets’ management team to manage their operations, being accountable to the leadership team in achieving margins and service goals.

The article in the March/April 08 issue on Elements Bar in the Embassy Suites Fort Worth is a great example.

I would love to hear from my fellow bloggers and readers on this subject. Leave a comment below or contact me at blog@hotelfandb.com.

In-room dining, room service, personal culinary delivery…whatever you call it, room service needs a major shake up.

I wonder who the first hotelier was to introduce “room service”?

Obviously, room service has been around for a very long time. “Room Service,” the 1938 movie staring the famous Marx Brothers, uses a huge room service bill as part of the main movie plot. According to AH&LA, Westin was the first hotel company to offer 24-hour room service back in 1969.

Unfortunately, not a lot has changed in hotel room service. The folding room service table with pop-out wings, the white tablecloth, and, of course, the mini flower vase, mini ketchup, mini salt & pepper, and if the hotel is going all out…the mini Tabasco bottle. Everything is wrapped in cellophane and the smell of sterno fuel wafting through the guest room.

If you are lucky, the room service waiter takes the time to unwrap everything, removing the hot items from the sterno box and taking the cello off your $20.00 dollar glass of red wine. All this while you uncomfortably sit at the end of your bed, maybe in your robe watching CNN.

Once your in-room dining experience is completed, you of course have to call down to room service to remind them to pick up the tray or cart. You are generally reminded of this via the small tent card on your dinner tray. Since most guests do not like old food hanging around their room and prefer not to again have a stranger enter their room, the tray or room service cart is placed in the hallway outside of the room.

I have seen, okay, I have been this guy, holding the guest room door open with one leg while I push the cart out into the hallway with the other. All the time hoping that the door does not slip and close behind you and lock you out. Your tray then joins the many others littered down the hall, results of forgotten deliveries and obvious unkept promises to “call room service when you are done.”

If you do happen to leave your tray in your room, maybe falling asleep while watching a movie, you trust that housekeeping will remove the tray. And they do…all the way to right outside your doorway, leaving the tray for room service to come retrieve. I have seen many a tray spending more time in the hallway than guests stay in their rooms.

So room service is not my favorite experience. With very few exceptions, my room service experiences have been less than memorable. Underwhelmed an overcharged are my memories of room service.

So to you service experts out there…what can we do? I don’t mean replace the daisy with a rose, and I don’t mean upgrade the linen. I mean what can we do to really change the way room service is offered? How do we shake this up in a big way?

Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments area below.

It was 1973. My family was living in eastern Washington State, Selah to be specific. This, by the way, was a long time before the region started making great wines. It was all apples, peaches, wild asparagus along the Yakima River, and my favorite, Bing cherries.

Gas was over six dollars a gallon. I remember this because my dad used to joke with me that gas would always be the same price as my age. It kind of freaked me out for a while.

We were on a very tight budget. My dad was working for a start-up food machinery company that designed and installed bakeries around the world. His last project was a pita bread bakery installation in Iran. Yes, times were very different back then. Not having much to spend on luxuries, it was a very big deal when we got to eat out at a restaurant. Normally it would be our favorite pizza place, Grizzly Pizza.

Grizzly Pizza was your normal local pizza joint. I can remember the timber lodge décor, super supreme pies, and big pitchers of root beer. To this day, I still love root beer with my pizza. The staff at this particular pizza place treated families like gold. Me, my mom, dad, and four-year-old sister were welcomed like royalty when we visited. Maybe they understood how difficult it was during those lean times to eat out; maybe they had kids of their own. Maybe they “just got it.” I think they “just got it.”

They remembered our names, not just the parents but me and my sister. They remembered that I liked root beer and my sister liked Dr. Pepper. They brought crayons and coloring books, little toys, and even tokens for the juke box. I loved going there–hey, I am still talking about it 34 years later!

Today I have my own son. We have been blessed with a different financial situation that has allowed us to dine out and travel often. My three-year-old son has eaten and stayed at some of the best places around. More than I could have ever imagined in my youth! He is the consummate diner; he knows the service process so well that when we hit the occasional “fast food” joint he is astounded that someone does not bring the food to the table. My wife and I are working on making sure he does not get too spoiled, by the way, but I think he is working on that VIP table at Mastros.

What I find amazing today is that so many hotel restaurants and many stand-alone places fall way short of providing the type of memorable experience that I cherished as a child. They might have high chairs, sippy cups, crayons, and coloring books, but what is glaringly missing is that personal touch focused at the kids!

More common are hotel restaurants that simply set themselves up to “tolerate” the family dinners rather that welcome them. Dirty and sticky, sometimes wobbly wooden high chairs with broken safety straps, a complete disdain for kids that often results in getting seated right next to the bathrooms, and rarely is a wine list put down at a table with youngsters present.

Okay, I have a three-year-old. My opinions are biased. I have to admit that my wife and I “pre-kid” would roll our eyes if were out to dinner and a gaggle of loud kids got seated right next to us. “How dare they bring kids to a nice place like this?” I am sure those words came out of my mouth.

But I was wrong. Yes, you need to teach your kids to behave at restaurants. Don’t let them run around wild, hoping that the service staff will watch them while you try to enjoy three minutes of silence. You have to respect others, but you really should get your kids out to restaurants.

There are a lot of places out there that do understand this. I know, for instance, that a significant resort in my current home town, La Quinta Resort & Club specifically designs their holiday events around families with kids. There are hundreds of families that make this particular resort a family tradition, many coming back for decades. All of this because of memories instilled in those young minds of being treated so well that they, as adults, now bring their kids there to experience what they did as youngsters. This is priceless, a brand with a legacy. How can anyone not want that?

My posts generally involve “How to” lists. I will spare you this time, but wrap your heads around the fact that kids will grow up, and when they do, they will look for a place to go out to dinner. Will it be yours?

And it can all start with pizza and a pitcher of root beer.

So Mr. and Mrs. Newmoney decide that since they have traveled extensively around the globe and stayed at only the most exclusive hotels, they are well qualified to buy, renovate, and open a hip boutique hotel. Let’s call them dreamers for the sake of this article.

Nothing wrong with dreamers, don’t get me wrong. However….

Don’t get me started on how this dynamic is really doing some damage to our industry. Guest experience and perception of independent boutique hotels is getting tromped on. Of course there are some solid, creative, and just plain genius owners out there….but many fall short.

The biggest mistake most of these dreamers make is trying to be all things to all people. I recently worked with an owner in Southern California and their brand new 30-room boutique property in a very nice part of town. This was their very first business venture, much less the first time they had ever been exposed to the business end of hospitality. They had a good handle on the guest rooms. Yes, the furniture they bought is going to wear out in a few months and, yes, the linens they are using have to be hand-ironed by one of their poor room attendants just to get the wrinkles out. But overall, the guest rooms were nice, the design was cool, and the staff was looking sharp.

But the restaurant. They took a small room off the lobby—I think it used to be part of the front desk—and turned it into their “all day bistro.” From there, they serviced hotel guests, walk-in guests, and 24-hour room service. All this with one regular refrigerator, a home style stove/oven, and a microwave. No hoods, no prep area, no hand wash sink. They had told the fire and health inspectors that this was a break room to get their permits to open.

They did not tell me any of this when they hired me to come in and “fix” their F&B service issues. In just four weeks since they opened, they had been through two “chefs” and turned over the service staff three times.

Once I saw the operation, I told them that the only way to move forward was to bring in an architect and re-design the kitchen to code. I will not work with an illegal operation. The owner was shocked to now be spending about twice what he needed to with a post-opening conversion of the kitchen and restaurant. Their hotel is going to suffer through a busy summer (near the beach!) without F&B.

This is the second time I have run across situations like this in just the past few months. With more and more inexperienced “dreamers” opening up properties with no expert advice, I am sure this is happening all over the country.

What this all brings us to is the need for owners of smaller properties, even inns and B&B operations, to plan accordingly when it comes to their F&B operation. Look to outside experts, not your friends or relatives. Even worse is relying on equipment vendors to design your operation! Their goal is to sell equipment, not to maximize your space and revenue opportunities.

Smaller boutique hotels have a lot of opportunity when it comes to what they can do with food and beverage. Being independent allows you to actually be a “dreamer”—just do it right. Here are some suggestions if you fall into the dreamer category:

• Hire a good commercial kitchen design/architectural firm. They can save you a lot of money and time in the long run. They can, in most cases, even identify ways to capture revenue or maximize expenses that you may not have thought about. This will also, in most cases, guarantee that you are going to pass plan check and health inspections.
• Consider bringing in an outside expert on F&B, specifically hotel F&B. This person can go over your vision and apply it realistically to your operation, budget, and local market. It may cost a bit at the beginning, but, like the designer, will save and make a lot of money for you over time. You will also not need prescription headache medicine, just the extra strength that anyone in the hospitality industry is addicted to!
• Don’t design menus that you can’t really prepare. Match your menu to your expected guests, not what you want to eat every day. Be realistic about the operation, market, and expected volume.
• Be ready to change. The best plans will need to be revised, altered, and sometimes even scratched as the reality of your operation becomes apparent.
• Listen to your customers. I hear time and time again from dreamers that their guests “just don’t get it.” Well…if they don’t “get it,” then you won’t get them or their money.

So to all of you dreamers out there, be bold. Go forth and buy, build, create and innovate new hotels. Just plan a little and don’t be afraid to bring in some help at the get-go.